The 2nd Amendment is interesting in that alone among the amendments in the Bill of Rights, it states a reason for it’s existence. That reason being that people proficient with arms are important for the security of the community.

That reason for being is used by hoplophobes (people who don’t like guns – thank you Col. Cooper) to claim that the 2nd Amendment only applies to State Militias. That leap of reality requires a really perverse bit of logic, especially when the 2nd Amendment concludes with:

“…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

That’s a very clear command. It says bluntly that the people have a right to keep and bear arms and that no one is permitted to mess with that right in any way.

It makes the 1st Amendment’s wording of “Congress shall make no law respecting….” seem downright obscure. A literal reading of the 1st Amendment, would have you conclude that only Congress is restrained from limiting religion, speech or the press. Yet, very few people would care to make that argument. We understand that if anyone places any but the most limited and modest restrictions on faith, speech or press, that it would threaten one of the most important foundation stones of our democratic republic.

Compare:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Jeez, a bright 4th grader can understand these concepts. Well, that is a 4th grader who went to school before 1965.

Scalia spoke Monday at Princeton University in New Jersey, where gay freshman Duncan Hosie asked about his dissent in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, in which he compared laws that ban sodomy to those prohibiting bestiality and murder. The question received more applause than Scalia’s speech, according to the Associated Press.

“I don’t think it’s necessary, but I think it’s effective,” said Scalia of the bans. He said that he was not equating sodomy with murder, but rather drawing a parallel between the prohibitions on both acts.

“It’s a form of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the ‘reduction to the absurd,'” he told Hosie, who is from San Francisco. “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?”

Scalia answered questions following a lecture to promote his new book, Reading Law. As for the law, Scalia said the Constitution was already “flexible” enough, in his view.
“My Constitution is a very flexible one,” he said. “There’s nothing in there about abortion. It’s up to the citizens. … The same with the death penalty.”

“It isn’t a living document,” he said. “It’s dead, dead, dead, dead.”

Meaning it is settled law and cannot change because it is dead and we cannot change it, but only by amendment and that’s another law that is not dead that can be changed, deleted or thrown out, calling it unconstitutional, for the U.S. Constitution can never be ruled unconstitutional!

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“The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own. Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.” ― Jeff Cooper, Art of the Rifle